Direct Democracy

Ballot Initiatives Activate Voters, Change The Landscape

August 31, 2024 Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, Portside. Organize! Ballot Initiative, Direct Democracy, Legislatures, Voting

As we head into the Fall and the critical final stage of the 2024 election, a large contingent of voters are grappling with feelings of fear, uncertainty, and disillusionment. While the recent shift in the presidential race has helped galvanize a new generation of voters and evoke a sense of hope and excitement, it hasn’t quieted all of the anxieties that have built up over the last several years. We are mobilizing people to vote at a time when more than 80% of adults in the US don’t believe their elected officials care what they think and alarmingly, roughly one-third of Americans say an authoritarian leader or military regime would be a good way of governing.

Federal Court To Decide If Atlanta Voters Could Have A Say On Cop City

December 22, 2023 Cody Bloomfield, Truthout. Educate! Atlanta, Cop City, Direct Democracy, Legal System, Police, Voting

A court case heard in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on December 14, 2023, could have a decisive impact on the legal fight to finally put Cop City on the ballot. If successful, the citizen ballot initiative would put a question to voters about whether to revoke the lease of land to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build the massive militarized police training facility, which has seen grassroots resistance reach a fever pitch this year. In Atlanta, for a citizen ballot initiative to be voted on in a general election, petition gatherers must collect signatures equivalent to 15 percent of active registered Atlanta voters within 60 days.

Direct Democracy And The Need For Physical Space

December 16, 2023 Yavor Tarinski, Resilience. Strategize! Activism, Democracy, Digital organizing, Direct Democracy

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about digital, or e-democracy – focusing on online participation. There is even talk of a so-called Appocracy – civic participation being channeled through smartphone apps. Many see in such means an exit from the deepening crisis of representative “democracy”. Often the reason people give when engaging with such proposals, is valid – people globally are indeed mistrustful towards professional politicians and tend to increasingly absent from the rituals of political representation (such as elections). The problem comes with what they propose as an alternative. The logic behind the supposed digitalization of democracy is based on the misunderstanding of political participation as passive activity, such as consumerism.

The Digital Tools Unlocking Democracy In Our Cities

March 12, 2023 Hollie Russon Gilman and Grace Levin, Next City. Create! Cities, Direct Democracy, Participatory budgeting, Science and technology

Digitization. It’s the threat that modern democracies, and especially cities, must solve – at least according to current dialogues on digital regulation. Many of the social and political problems our cities face today have been exacerbated by technology. Social media and other digital tools have increased the spread of misinformation and overall weakened public trust in our civic, social and political institutions. Recent developments in virtual reality and artificial intelligence raise new concerns for issues around surveillance, bias, automation and exploitation, especially with increasing public scrutiny on technology giants like Meta and Google.

Minneapolis Is About To Vote On Whether To Dismantle The Police

October 7, 2021 Logan Carroll, In These Times. Create! Defund the police, Direct Democracy, Minneapolis, Police

It was a cool Friday in Minneapolis, made cooler by the shadows of the skyscrapers towering over People’s Plaza. In the brick-lined courtyard between the Hennepin County Government Center and Minneapolis City Hall on September 17, the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign and its allies held a rally whose purpose had come undone the day before. Yes 4 Minneapolis is working to amend the Minneapolis City Charter by removing a mandate for a mayor-controlled police department with a certain number of officers per resident (0.0017, to be exact). In its place, the amendment establishes a Department of Public Safety under the joint control of the mayor and the 13-member Minneapolis City Council. The radical restructuring would allow for future revisions.

Elections Proved Americans Are Done With The Drug War

November 22, 2020 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. Educate! 2020 Elections, Direct Democracy, Drug War, Legalization

Something seismic happened in this election and it has nothing to do with Joe Biden winning. And yes, Joe Biden did indeed win. I’m sorry for those of you Trump fans who believe the election was rigged against him. It simply wasn’t. Yes, millions of Americans were indeed purged from the voter rolls – but they were mostly people of color. So if MAGA Nation are waiting for those votes to be counted, then Trump will actually do even worse. And I honestly don’t care if you’re thinking, “But I saw a video on Tik-Tok of someone burning a ballot and then smothering it in hot sauce and eating it.”

The Kurdish Freedom Movement, Rojava And The Left

August 1, 2020 Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Middle East Research and Information Project. Strategize! Direct Democracy, Kurds, Left Politics, Rojava

The revolution in the Kurdish region of Syria called Rojava has generated significant enthusiasm among broad segments of the left in Europe and North America. The heroic resistance by Kurdish forces in Kobane, Syria during the siege by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in late 2014 and into early 2015 proved to be a pivotal moment. Images of revolutionary fighters, and particularly of armed women, engaged in a life-and-death struggle, bravely resisting the vicious onslaught by Islamist thugs, caught the attention and imagination of many on the so-called international left.

Nine More Communities Vote To Amend The U.S. Constitution

November 7, 2018 WI United To Amend. Organize! Citizens United, Dark money, Direct Democracy, Elections

Madison, WI – On Tuesday, November 6th, Wisconsin residents in nine communities voted to amend the U.S. Constitution to clarify that only human beings should have inalienable human rights and money is not the same thing as free speech. All referenda passed with overwhelming majorities in three counties: Jackson (69%), Sauk (72%) and Wood (80%); the villages of Readstown (91%), Westfield (87%) and Weston (83%); and the towns of Kickapoo (85%), Rib Mountain (78%) and Vermont (86%). That brings the total to 142 Wisconsin communities that have called for an amendment.

Three Voter Initiatives That Have Not Gotten Much Attention

October 31, 2016 David Morris, www.ilsr.org Create! Democracy, Direct Democracy, Voter Initiatives

By David Morris for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. We believe in direct democracy, where people make the decisions rather than elected representatives. This article describes initiatives in three state that take on different issues. California has an initiative that takes on pharmaceutical prices. It is imperfect but a step toward controlling the out-of-control prices of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States. South Dakota takes on multiple democracy initiatives, i.e. one does away with partisan elections, a second creates a commission to redraw legislative districts every ten years, and the final vote is on a series of steps to reduce money in politics, one of the changes would be democracy credits donate to state legislative candidates who agree to participate in at least three public debates and cap the amount of private money they receive per contributor. We do not support doing away with partisan elections because what this ends up doing is doing away with third parties who do not have the money to compete, and can result in having two Democrats or two Republicans running against each other . . .

How Communities Are Using Direct Democracy To Shape City Budgets

October 10, 2016 Brandon Jordan, www.wagingnonviolence.org Create! Direct Democracy, Participatory budgeting

By Brandon Jordan for Waging Nonviolence - A recent poll conducted by Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who trust the public in handling issues is at an all-time low. Reasons for this vary, with eroded faith in institutions playing a role. Yet, in more than 40 neighborhoods across the United States, a new tool called participatory budgeting is boosting confidence among citizens in working with neighbors to solve problems together.

These Online Platforms Make Direct Democracy Possible

June 5, 2016 Tom Ladendorf, www.inthesetimes.com Organize! Democracy, Direct Democracy, Internet, Politics

By Tom Ladendorf for In These Times. Under the banners of Democracy Spring and Democracy Awakening, thousands of people spent April 11-18 disrupting Washington, D.C., to send a message: Get big money out of politics. Campaign finance reform could do a lot to revive American democracy, but it’s not the only effort afoot to give people a larger voice. Around the world, organizations from political parties to cooperatives are experimenting with new modes of direct democracy made possible by the internet. “The world has gone through extraordinary technological innovation,” says Agustín Frizzera of Argentina’s Net Party. “But governments and political institutions haven’t innovated enough.”

Direct Democracy For The Minimum Wage In 2016

October 25, 2015 Staff, www.TheFairnessProject.org Create! Direct Democracy, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Voter Initiatives

By Staff for The Fairness Project - While Congress and state legislatures across the country remain paralyzed by partisan disagreement, ballot initiatives hold the promise of improving the lives of millions of Americans. The Fairness Project is bolstering state-based ballot initiative campaigns and driving a national narrative to elevate issues of economic fairness.By harnessing the power of successful ballot initiative campaigns, The Fairness Project is empowering voters to take direct action to change their own lives. In 2016, The Fairness Project will focus on ballot-initiative campaigns that seek to raise the minimum wage, working with partner organizations across the country to enact legislation through the ballot box to improve pay for millions of working people. In future campaign cycles, The Fairness Project will work with state-level partners to select a single economic issue aecting a wide number of people, putting it on the ballot in multiple states, and establishing it as a central issue in the national political dialogue of that cycle.

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